Day 18: Mantova

It has been hard to tell in the early morning what the weather will be like later in the day….often the heavy overcast of 7:30 am gives way to some sunshine or some brightening later in the morning. When we leave the hotel for our morning walk, the sun is trying to break through.
I want to visit the synagogue in Mantova…but no one ever answers the phone and the tourist office (one of the most accommodating in Italy in our experience) has no luck either. So we take a walk in that direction….which takes us through another attractive commercial section and along the pretty tree-lined canal that crosses the city.

The synagogue was moved in the 20th century from its original 18th century location…there is nothing to identify it on the street other than a plaque commemorating the Mantovani who were deported to the death camps, and traffic barriers keeping cars from parking in front of the entrance. No one answers when we ring the bell, so we move on….our visit will have to wait for our next trip to Mantova.

Back to the hotel and into the car…..we are taking a day trip to Verona, about 20 miles to the north of Mantova. We make one stop enroute…at the house of Andrea Mantegna, the Gonzaga court artist. While the house is closed today (Monday)—because there is an exhibition going on—we are able to get a look inside the distinctive courtyard that the artist designed--a circular space within a rectangular building.

The trip to the Verona exit from the autostrada takes just over a half hour but then we drive through seemingly endless suburbs and commercial development (probably 15 minutes) until we reach the city walls. Based on our experience on our previous stay in Verona, I plan to drive into the city and find a parking space on the street. And we do see many empty parking spaces as we drive around the periphery, crossing the beautiful Adige River several times. But we don’t see any machines selling parking tickets and all the seemingly legal spaces are marked with signs specifying something called “VeronaPark”. We finally park along the city wall and find out that the parking scheme in Verona is the same as we had encountered in Modica earlier in the year. “Tabacchi” and other shops sell scratch off tickets which you put on the dashboard to show you have paid for the parking. I buy three hours worth and we head for the “centro”.

Verona is an exceedingly beautiful city—H.V. Morton calls it the most beautiful in Italy—and one of the most attractive areas is the Piazza Bra—a huge pedestrian area with a park in the middle, ringed with cafes and restaurants and dominated by the huge Roman arena, where operas are performed during the summer. Even with the threatening weather, the piazza is full of full of people. We walk up the very attractive main shopping street, Via Mazzini—also car free…today full of German speaking tour groups…until it ends in the other main piazza, the Piazza delle Erbe. This is the location for the Verona market and the medieval square is filled with market stalls selling produce as well as clothing and souvenir items.
We pick one of the restaurants on the piazza—the one right in front of the column with the Venetian lion on top, sit down and order lunch while we watch the people passing by. This piazza is much smaller than the Piazza Bra but it is extremely pleasant, flowers cascading down from balconies, the pink marble glowing….

Lunch is fine…a “cartoccio” of delicious cured meats for Diana—served on a large sheet of brown paper and a dish of tripe with polenta for me. After lunch, we walk back to through the city, stop for a gelato in the Piazza Bra, and retrieve the car. Instead of going directly back to Mantova, we make a detour to Lago di Garda, about a half hour west of Verona. We drive along the lake for a while, stop for a few minutes in Bardolino (the lake is quite wide at this end and we can’t see the other side), admire the pretty harbor, pick up the autostrada in the hills above the lake and drive back to Mantova.

After a short stop at the wi-fi bar on the Piazza Sordello, we are ready for dinner. The restaurant I had selected is closed for a private function—but, as we crossed a piazza, a very attractive wine bar/restaurant caught our eye. We looked at the menu and—despite the fact we knew nothing about it, we walked in.
The restaurant—called Tiratappi (cork puller)—proves the rule of serendipity and illustrates that you can’t plan everything and need to be open to spontaneity. The meal was extremely pleasant and the service was very gracious. Everything was attractively presented and also delicious. Diana had ravioli filled with cheese and I had a pasta with sausage….both excellent. For secondi, Diana’s “tagliata” (sliced steak) was terrific and my goulash served with couscous was delicious. We also had a small dish of aged grana padano served with green tomato mostarda…..the cheese was outstanding. We drank a very nice Valpolicella Classico 2003 from Allegrini.

The walk back through the piazzas of Mantova—with all the buildings lit up---was a nice end to our last evening in town.